


rules of the game

by fallish



Category: Cartoon Therapy (Web Series), Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Sleeping Beauty Fusion, Fae & Fairies, Fluff and Angst, Immortality, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Parental Deceit | Janus Sanders, Royalty, Slow Burn, ill add more tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallish/pseuds/fallish
Summary: The Evergreen and Imagi were never quite in peacetime. Roman’s just trying to figure out how to survive and succeed his mother. Logan wants to live long enough to use his magic however he wants. Patton is coasting while repressing everything, still trying to figure out what feelings are.Virgil doesn’t want to change the world.Luckily, it isn’t up to him.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Deceit | Janus Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton, Logic | Logan Sanders & Thomas Sanders
Comments: 14
Kudos: 27





	1. this was no accident

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when the land was still blessed with magic and the fae were both revered and feared in equal measure, there were four boys who lived in a castle. 

Now, it’s important to remember that they lived in the castle, but at first, their time never really seemed to line up. 

The first one, the one who lived there in the beginning, is named Virgil. He didn’t want to live in the castle, but since he no longer had a family, it made sense to just follow the will of what his parents wanted. The king seemed nice enough anyway, offering Virgil his own room and gifting him with a family portrait that had been painted years ago. Virgil hung it up with the same attitude one would scrape peanut butter off a slice of burnt toast to put back into the jar. 

His journey starts with an order from the Queen.

~|~

When Virgil wakes up, he knows exactly what the day ahead looks like. The previous night had been full of fitful unrest, his heart jerking in his chest whenever he closed his eyes, the distinct feeling that he’s forgotten something tugging him out of bed and making him check his bag again and again. 

Standing in front of his mirror, Virgil feels out of place. His armor weighs awkwardly unbalanced on his shoulders, the iron pauldrons uncomfortably loose. The pieces are special in their own right, the spares his father left behind on his last mission. It’s an honor, he has to remind himself, to walk the same path, even if it feels like anything but.

The shine of the metal contrasts the shadows under his eyes, dark circles growing darker every minute he keeps looking at himself. Blowing his bangs out of his eyes, he glares at his reflection. If he was his father, he would be able to don a proud smile, something reassuring. Instead, he looks like a poor imitation of a knight, like a child playing pretend.

It sends a roiling bitterness through his stomach.

Sighing, he tucks his blades into the sheaths on his belt. After a moment of hesitation, he tucks the dagger his mother gifted him into his belt. It’s the only one he has that isn’t made of iron. The queen mandated almost everything he wore, but this small addition would likely go unnoticed, just another knife on a fully kitted knight.

Almost-knight.

When he swallows, the man, the boy, in the mirror does the same. Seventeen, he thinks, is too young for a mission like this. 

The queen had smiled saccharine sweet when she’d pulled him aside. She had come up with the perfect first mission she’d said. 

Virgil had tried his best to hide his skeptical thoughts when she brought it up, but her eyes were sharp on his, her scrutinizing gaze looking through his soul. She just smiled like she could hear exactly what he was thinking and then, “My king, I believe it would do Virgil some good to prove himself,” and the king agreed, nodding placatingly, not really listening as the queen continued, “He should go alone.”

He could see the king visibly hesitate before she brushed a curl behind his ear and his eyes went blank. “Of course, my dear,” the royal simpered.

After years of living with her, he knows much better than to protest. No matter what he thought, he held his tongue, and he started his research. 

In the days before his mother’s death, she had given him her collection of books on the Evergreen and the fae, and in the privacy of their home, she told him to keep them safe from Adelaide, to never let her see, and he followed her instructions to the letter. The books were safe in his room, unvisited and sequestered from her prying gaze, and gods know did she pry.

It’s like she can hear him when he thinks the slightest doubt, reaching for him even as he cringes away from her hands. When he was younger, she used to say it was affection, a hug from someone who could be considered a parent in the future. Now, she doesn’t sugarcoat it, a disapproving scowl covering her face as she tells him he should be grateful for any guidance she can offer. This journey was probably just another thing on the list for her.

When his father, the venerable Sir Linus, was alive, he loved his knights. They were the king’s knights back then, a group loyal to a man who would do anything for them in return for their service. In perspective, this _audition_ for the queen’s knight’s felt bizarre.

Not only were solo missions for knights who already proved their mettle, this mission seemed more appropriate for knights like Adrien, who had probably sold their souls to be noticed by Adelaide, who would die for her sake.

Virgil is hardly sure he even wants to be a knight. The only reason he stands here today is to follow what his father wished for him back when he had been alive, aspirations to be knights to the same court, a legacy. When his father was alive, Virgil had been all for it, his head full of stories of how they would always ride together, never alone and never wanting for anything, carrying the symbols of the greatest of kingdoms.

The image seems sepia tinted, in retrospect, nostalgia on his father’s part coloring the narrative.

Virgil had done everything to get along with the other knights, and though they spared nothing in training him to fight, he knew they never really liked him. No matter how hard he fought or how good he got, they only ever saw him as the king’s ward, handed his position on a silver platter living a gold gilded life. He never seemed to measure up.

His hands shake as he does up the last knot in his vambraces, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t muster up a smile for the portrait of his parents, their family feeling like a distant memory at this point.

Their image looms overhead, and he barely recognizes the child that he was when the damn thing was painted. The small smile he wore, Virgil wishes he could do that again. 

He takes a deep breath. The faster he leaves, the faster he would be able to come back. 

As he gathers the last of his supplies, he gives his parents one last nod, he leaves the room. 

If he does this right, he’ll be back before the week is up. 

~|~

The map he painstakingly spent two nights copying from a book on the outskirts guides his path to a town a little over a day’s ride away from the castle border. 

Julep, his horse, is taking her sweet time with the journey, but with how much reluctance Virgil has towards this particular trip, he thinks he can forgive her for it. 

Despite his previous determination to get this mission over with as soon as possible, he had found himself dragging his heels his whole march to the stables. He usually loves to go visit the animals, the horses having long since endeared themselves to him. 

Julep had come with him as just a pony when he first moved into the castle. As a gesture to him and his father, the king had offered to keep her in the stables until Virgil needed a horse for knightly duties, and he had agreed. She was his first real friend at the manor. The other horses had fallen into his heart when he found himself surrounded by knights ages older than him and no one his age to talk to.

She knows him well enough now that she can probably sense his dread about this town. As it is, the outskirts are pretty much the last border between the kingdom and the land of the fae, and he knows one toe into that territory would be an act of war.

Not only did Adelaide send him here, where she knows knights aren’t generally well received, she probably didn’t care that much if the fae decided he’d edged just a tad too close. Adelaide was known as the kindest queen the kingdom had ever seen only to those who didn’t _actually_ live in the castle. 

When King Cromwell had agreed to make him a ward, she had been welcoming, like he was a guest, but with his continued presence, she had maybe gotten too used to him. She treated him like one of the court, like he was a piece to be moved. While he didn’t like it, he figured so long as they tolerated each other, they would be fine.

He doubts the court really knows much about her beyond what she tried to show them, though.

She’s a walking nightmare to anyone who has actually spoken to her for more than a few seconds, outside of court. The sugar sweet tone in her voice is as fake as the company she chooses to keep around. She lays it on so thickly, he finds it hard to listen for long periods of time. The way the queen giggled at courtesan jokes while her own husband barely knew what was going on just didn’t sit right with him. 

To make matters worse, creatures with most any kind of magical affinity flinched at the sight of her. Her distaste for the fae was no secret, made obvious by the magical borders she kept, the iron wall a statement of itself. Virgil had shuddered while passing them, and now in the outskirts, he found himself understanding what those walls looked like to those outside of it. 

Approaching the town, the wall is just visible over the trees that lead him to a cleared path.

Refocusing on the task at hand, he considers his options for the mission. The creatures of the Evergreen aren’t well documented, to the point where though Virgil had read every book on the topic of them, he hadn’t come across any description of the fiend who was supposedly attacking nearby villages. Most of his mother’s books described creatures of the Evergreen as benevolent for the most part.

Knights didn’t generally go on missions with so many unknowns, guards usually doing at least _some_ reconnaissance.

Still, he continues to ride into the quiet town. From the first second Julep crosses onto the main road, there is something off about the emptiness in the town. In the corner of his eye, he sees something blur past them.

“Hello?” He calls out, his voice quiet enough in the cool evening, but hopefully loud enough for the creature to hear. Dismounting carefully, the anxiety in his chest takes over as another blur catches his vision. His hand rests on his sword as he steps away from Julep, hopefully making himself a more appealing target than her. “Is anyone there?”

These houses don’t appear to be abandoned in any sort of hurry. For a ghost town, it seemed like one out of a painting. Everything had a place, from the ceramic jugs on people’s porches to the cobblestone main street. The discomfort moves to his throat, the silence unsettling.

Out of the woods at the edge of the village, the silence breaks, a faint rumbling sounding out. He squints at the border, taking a few steps forward, but before he can get closer, the creature reveals itself with a shrill scream, sending him scrambling back. 

The large green monstrosity makes an entrance, knocking down a tree, landing just a few feet in front of him as it staggers unsteadily. It towers over the buildings in the village, swinging its head around erratically. It chooses it’s steps wildly, one leg stumbling over the other, all four legs hooved and coming down with little regard for the others. 

From where the shock sent him to the ground, he can see the panic in the creature’s eyes and the strap high on its neck. It wasn’t attacking the village on purpose.

As much as the frantic thumping in his chest wants him to run, he feels something strange about the creature. Now that he is in front of it, it didn’t feel evil, nothing like the monsters the knights came home to brag about. Instead, it cries and wails like it wants as much to do with the situation as Virgil does.

He can hear Julep’s alarmed noises as he sheds his chestplate and scrambles back behind a building. Her whines sound out even as he shushes her. The creature staggers toward the sound, its eyes turning cloudy and its long pointed ears twitching forward. 

“It’s blind,” he says shocked, slamming a hand over his mouth as it swings back toward him. Julep kicks a pot that was left out by the villagers and it moves away again, but she seems to realize just how much noise her hooves make as the creature lunges towards her. 

The frantic nature of the attacks make sense now, if it had been able to see at some point, it would be panicking. His first goal is to get the strap off its neck. Maybe freeing it of whatever that thing was would make it calm.

“Keep going!” He calls to Julep and runs out to pull it’s attention back to him. Julep’s stomps draw its attention again and without his armor weighing him down, he takes a running leap at the creature's back. 

It lurches it’s head backwards, snapping wildly at him with plant dull teeth, but he’s too fast to be caught. His hands scrape on the green scales, and while he is prepared for a fight, as soon as he reaches the black strap, it goes completely limp, its legs collapsing under itself and head hitting the ground too fast for it to be safe.

He pulls out his dagger and digs the tip under the sludge-like texture of the strap. The creature makes a pitiful noise lifting its head slightly before flopping down again. Julep comes up and noses her snout lightly against its nose. It snuffles at the gesture, like it might have been comforting and Virgil feels his chest swell with gratefulness for her. It takes a good chunk of time before every strand of the substance is released from its scales, especially with Virgil being extra careful to not touch it with his bare hands. He drags the strands away and makes sure they don’t latch on anywhere else. 

When the creature is finally free, its eyes blink open and the white film that had been clouding them. It doesn’t try to attack as Virgil stands off its body. Instead, it nuzzles Julep back and extends its head towards Virgil. He takes off the glove on his hand and reaches it out slowly, giving the creature a chance to pull back. It doesn’t. It leans into his touch, closing its eyes and resting down. 

Turning, it makes its way back towards the forest, it looks back at the two of them. Virgil leans on Julep, trying to figure out what to do with the slime, but looking up, the creature is standing expectantly, turning from the village to the woods.

“I can’t go in there,” Virgil scrunches up his eyebrows, unsure how to communicate this to something from the Evergreen. Did they even have english in the Evergreen? The creature rounds them easily, surprisingly maneuverable and agile now that the sludge is off. It elegantly nudges them in the direction of the border. “It’s not safe or legal for me to go there.”

It makes an urgent noise and pushes him further. Julep trots easily following the directions of the creature. 

A noise that doesn’t come from any of them sounds out and the ground shakes again as the creature hits the ground behind them again. Virgil jerks away at the sight of a large wooden pole sticking up from between the creature’s scales. It had been so docile just moments ago, but now he can see the frantic look in its eyes as blood begins to leak from the side of its body. It makes the urgent noise again and tilts its head towards the forests.

At the end of the street, a house catches fire and calls sound out like signals, and he’s suddenly surrounded. 

A man stands atop a nearby house and slides down the slates of the roof, landing in front of him. “Buddy, your orders said to kill the beast, huh? We just did your job for you,” His hair is greasy, slicked back, and his breaded, salacious grin makes him take a step back. “Looks like you owe us.”

Virgil desperately wants to go to the creature, but he can see the light draining out of it as it attempts to keep its eyes open. “We can talk about this,” He edges to the side with his hands out placatingly. “Just let me treat the creature. It doesn’t deserve to suffer. My orders were to take care of the beast, and that’s what I’m doing.”

He snorts, kicking the chestplate at his feet, Virgil’s armor, away from him as he backs up. “Uh huh. You’ve got quite the bounty on your head, royal. Hurry it up.” He lets him approach the creature.

“Hey, you’ve got to stay awake,” Virgil presses his fingers gently at its scales, flinching when the creature lets out an ear piercing shriek. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help,” The blood is staining his hands red too quickly for the creature to make it through this. 

He can feel the tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, but he blinks them away in favor of leaning his head down to comfort the creature just as Julep had. If the man knows he is a royal, there isn’t a great chance either of them are coming out of this unscathed. 

“It’s okay, you can rest. I’ll get you where you need to go.” The creature’s wounds glow as it closes its eyes, its blood slowing as flecks of white emerge from where it once bled. Virgil can feel the tension drain out from the creature and his eyes blur as the flecks coat his hands. 

“Well, you definitely didn’t get that one right,” The man sneers. “And you won’t be going anywhere.” The blade cutting through his side is a shock to his system as he staggers up. 

“What...” He rattles out, falling after a few steps as the blow really registers. “What have you done?” The cry that comes from his throat sounds nothing like himself, too gutted. Just like you, his brain interjects as he tries to clear his head enough to get up. He makes it to his knees before a blow to his shoulder puts him on his ass. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees another man taking aim at Julep, and all hope of escape leaves him. He whistles as loud as he can, Julep coming right towards him. Using his last remaining strength, he slings himself onto her back and holds a hand up to stop the arrow launched towards them. It shatters as it hits his still glowing palm, and he stares at it in shock. As Julep carries them into the Evergreen, he meets the eyes of the head honcho who killed the creature. In an act of defiance, he sticks up a glowing middle finger, and the trees block them all from view as a volley of arrows follow them.

~|~

He doesn’t know how long they ride when they stop. The sounds of a barrage of men following them stopped a while ago, and the whole time, Julep has been riding as steadily as she can as to not harm him more than he already is. The only reason she slows down is this clearing. There’s a stream with water, and a large open space to maybe treat the wounds he acquired.

He blinks his eyes open as she jostles them. It takes longer than maybe either of them wanted for him to get off her back. As soon as his feet touch the ground, his knees give, and if it weren’t for Julep, he would have collapsed. 

Together, they approach the water, and just as he goes to dip in a hand, he sees the movement of a little creature swimming around. She curiously breeches the water at his small wave.

“Hi,” He swallows, struggling to make words as his pain overwhelms him momentarily, “Can I use this water to clean myself? I need to treat my wounds, but I don’t wish to cause you any trouble.”

His arms weaken and he can’t keep holding onto Julep. His whole body aches and he can’t see her anymore, but the little creature frantically pats his face with her water like hands.

“It’s okay,” he tries to reassure her gently. There’s probably not a chance he will live that long with injuries like this. It might be better at this point if he just didn’t accidentally harm her environment on top of that. “Hey, you can relax. Your water’s safe.”

Instead, he takes a moment to assess the glowing substance covering his hands. No longer pressing on his wound, the glow begins to leave them, the white dots flying into the air of the Evergreen, leaving him alone with the naiad.

He doesn’t notice his eyes have closed until she pulls on his hair and presses down on his eyelids until he blinks them open again. A chattering noise fills his ears as she summons some of the water from the stream to wrap around his middle.

“Thank you,” He smiles at her and she smiles back, but that look quickly changes as she dives back into the water, taking her water with her. Julep startles back behind him as well.

Out of the water on the other side of him, a large yellow snake has slithered in their direction. It slithers over his feet, sliding over the ground to study his wounds. Virgil can’t even manage a hand up to push it away. Instead, he lets the snake rest on his neck easily. The anxiety that should be welling up just isn’t there and even though he can feel his heartbeat rising, his head is clear, his thoughts still in the hopes that the snake doesn’t bite down. 

He blinks, and where the snake was, a man stands and presses two fingers to his pulse. 

“Weak enough, perhaps.” The mystery man frowns. “Who are you?” He asks. Virgil tries to focus on his face, but he can’t make out anything other than some blurriness in regards to the left side of his face.

“I’m,” He hesitates. He is in the Evergreen. This man might not be a man. Well, obvious, he was just a snake a moment ago. “You may call me Vee. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cross the border.”

The fae crouches next to him and shines and places a hand over his eyes. “Do you want to be saved?”

Virgil can’t figure out what was happening. If the books in the library were to be believed, fae were evil tricksters who would kill him in an instant. But here is a fae who had him dead to rights, and he wanted to know if he wanted to be _saved_? He’s confused, “Do you want to save me?”

The fae makes a frustrated noise at the question. “Can you answer the question?”

He really doesn’t have anything to lose. “I just want to make it out of this alive.”

There’s a pause, “That won’t do,” then the man pulls him up onto Julep and leads them away. 

Virgil hopes he didn’t sign both of their death warrants.

~|~

He wakes up in short flashes at a time. Cataloging all his aches takes more brain power than he has to give at the moment, and he can’t quite open his eyes. 

The first time he tries to sit up, tugging painfully at his wounds. He yelps and someone pushes him back down making shushing noises. They place a towel on his forehead and he goes easily with their direction. He absorbs approximately nothing about his surroundings.

The second time, he’s still out of it and someone’s at his side in the room.

“Are you awake?” His mind wrenches painfully at fully formed memories of a cold towel on his head and his father in the chair next to his bed. “Do you need anything, Vee?”

“Dad?” It’s out of his mouth before he really registers anything solidly. 

“Quite.” The voice is familiar, amused, but not at the same time. It fades as he slips back under.

The third time, he wakes up slowly enough that opening his eyes doesn’t hurt. The memory of the slash in his side keeps him from moving too much, but he still looks around at what he can see from the safety of the bed.

The fae who found him must be really interested in books, he thinks, someone after his own heart, at the several dozens of books embedded in the shelf walls. It’s a beautiful set up, and from what titles he can see, they’re all about different types of magic and history. Virgil is just running a finger over the spine of one when the fae walks into the room.

“Are you actually awake this time?” he asks, studying him under a scrutinizing gaze.

Virgil takes in how he feels. His eyes, for once, are not fighting to close again and his body is holding him propped a little further up from laying down. “I’m awake, I think.”

The fae, upon further inspection appears to have little yellow scales that take up the right side of his face. His ears are pointed and his short brown hair is pinned back revealing a singular snake eye, slitted and yellow in the socket. He has a cape on even though they are indoors and there is no need. The longer he stares the more his memory starts to fill in.

“You’re the snake who saved me.” 

Yellow scales shift in the light as he considers the statement and nods, “Can you read?”

“What’s with all the questions?” Virgil doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, but there’s a slew of things wrong with this situation. The first being that he can feel the muscles in his spine tightening from the discomfort of not knowing who the snake in front of him is and if the situation was bad enough to warrant panicking. He didn’t intend to die on this mission, but he didn’t dismiss the possibility either. He could be a new prisoner of war, if the queen was to be believed about the fae.

“I can’t lie.” The snake looks frustrated. “I can only say what I’m trying to say.” He makes an angry noise and makes a flipping motion with his hands. “Can you understand this?”

Virgil watches for a moment and it hits him that the hand sign for opposite looks extremely similar to the kingdom’s version of the hand sign. “You can only say the opposite of what you mean out loud?”

He nods with a sigh of relief. “Glad that hasn’t been sorted out. How do you feel?” 

Taking a moment to take stock of his body, he can’t feel the wounds in his side at all. None of the skin where he knew he was hurt even seems to be pulling or irritated. “Strangely well,” he narrows his eyes at the fae standing in the doorway. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t have one of my friends come to take a look at it. You didn’t make a deal to help it along.” He smiles at him, and the part of him that has learned common sense says he should be feeling at least unnerved, but the part of him that made a deal with a fae says impulse control is the last of his issues recently.

“A deal?” He asks, to make certain.

“I didn’t complete the deal with your consent, but you didn’t want to live and so I made you a little bit like me.” His eyes furrow for a moment. “A little bit like me. That isn’t odd, I didn’t mean to say something else.”

Pulling up his shirt, he runs a hand over his smooth skin. There wasn’t even a scar leftover from the attack. No magic that looks like this comes without a price. “What was the catch?”

“To undo what I did, you must not find true love’s kiss. Until you receive it, you will not be immortal like me.”

Why true love’s kiss? What made him make the deal? He knows he was on death’s doorstep before waking up here, so there must be something. What did the fae gain? The fae didn’t make deals that didn’t benefit themselves, if the queen’s books were accurate. His mother’s collection didn’t include much on human appearing fae, just creatures.

He can see a knot on his pinky, the same one he wore his family crest on and looking down the cord of his first deal, a feeling of something like fondness entered him. 

“Why did you help me?”

The fae pauses for a long moment. “What do you mean?”

“Why ask if I wanted to be saved? I remember being nearly saved by that water fae before you stumbled along. Why not just leave?” And the crux of the situation is, Virgil has been alone for a long time. He fended for himself since the queen started sending his father away on long, grueling missions. After his mother passed, he kept all of his more politically charged opinions a secret so as to not collect enemies. This fae, this _random_ fae, had taken the time to help when not even humans would have approached him.

“I didn’t see what you did for Nellie,” The fae swallows. “We couldn’t touch her. The witch came by the other day and didn’t put that thing on her neck while she slept. It was…” He trails off. “You didn’t care.”

Good things don’t happen to him, though and he did what anyone else would do.

Like he can see it on his face, the fae continues, “ _Everyone_ would have done what you did. Storming a green-backed strider with only a dagger and a sword, not to kill it, but to help it _isn’t_ anything special. Besides, the universe didn’t link us in some capacity because you weren’t going to be important to me.”

“Is that what this is?” Virgil studies the yellow yarn-like bond, thin and fragile on his hand.

“Yes,” the fae doesn’t elaborate, just smiles serenely. He clears his throat, “You may not call me Dee. You weren’t that out of it when I brought the two of you back, and I know how much you remember.”

Just like that, he realizes he forgot about Julep, the fool he was. His heart sets in his throat, “Is my horse okay?”

Dee snorts, “She’s not living in luxury, if you must know. It’s like she’s seen billions of sugar cubes in her life.”

Virgil finally relaxes into the sheets again. Julep is safe. He’s going to live forever, but that sounds like a tomorrow problem to his tired mind, his eyes blinking closed and his eyelids feeling heavier by the second.

“I won’t let you rest. We can’t talk more tomorrow.” Dee runs a hand over his head, the same way his father used to when he was ill, and walks out. Virgil tries to store as much of their conversation in his memory as possible before he sleeps, but it is lights out before he can save much of anything. 

~|~

Healing hurts way more than he thinks it should. Frequent visits from the fae that Dee invited over, Kai, makes it so that the process is much faster than it would have been if he was alone. 

Kai is snappy and funny and doesn’t know he’s a knight, and Virgil finds a way to joke a little with him every time he flinches and Kai looks like he wants to scream.

Dee sometimes checks on him and hums in approval. The only thing Virgil knows is it’s going much different than he’d imagined dying next to that river. 

Bedridden as he is, he has too much time to think. Dee keeps him company when he panics, sometimes reaching a hand out where he can see it to get permission to rub his back. Sometimes they just sign back and forth, Virgil’s hands steady even when his chest shudders and his ribs ache, until he can relax enough to breath on his own. 

Dee takes the times he’s conscious and sane to tell him stories about the Evergreen, even some about the creatures that Virgil had only seen drawn from his mother’s perspective, soft and unassuming, or in Adelaide’s books, their teeth too sharp and too hostile. In reality, there are cats in the Evergreen that curl up easily at his feet, normal teeth and all, their tails curling to flick happily when he has the energy to offer pets. 

Large creatures like the one he saved in the abandoned town lean a head through the window and nudge at him, nice as the one who had tried to warn him. One of the smaller ones licks at him and huffs against him, Dee ushering it out the door as it playfully tries to evade him and get at Virgil. It’s cute. They’re all pretty cute actually. 

It’s three days before his wounds close. Getting up is a freedom he doesn’t know he missed until he’s on his own two feet, shaky and smiling the whole time. Dee helps him take his first few steps around the room, letting the cats trot next to his ankles. When he gets the hang of it, he lets go and he does pretty okay, if he says so himself. It’s bittersweet.

He feels better in the Evergreen than he ever felt in the castle. It feels almost as if his energy is finally up after a long drought, like his heartbeat is steady for the first time. Even _breathing_ feels easier here. 

Dee laughs when he tells him that, saying it’s the way magic works in the Evergreen. It’s part of everyone and being near fae brings it to the surface, especially when humans made deals. That sits wrong with him, but he lets it be.

The next day, he says goodbye to all the creatures and Dee, setting back off towards the castle.


	2. if you’re warm then you can’t relate to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee knows most things. He won’t say he knows everything, but he knows many things. For him to have missed this is dangerous at best and negligent at worst.

It's barely morning when he makes it to the castle border. Virgil has traveled farther in less time, he knows, but after the last six days, the weariness was seeping into his bones. He knows that the queen probably sent those men. For all he knows, the thugs had been guessing when they called him a royal, but he can’t get over the _why_? 

It doesn’t make sense. The queen never liked him very much, but not liking someone doesn’t really seem like a good enough reason to have someone killed. 

He lets out a centering exhale, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. It wouldn’t matter so long as he could to talk with them at least.

Right now, the king is his only family. As far as godfathers go, Virgil thinks, for the most part, his parents chose well enough. As a child, Virgil had spent hours sitting next to him, listening for stories about his father and times the kingdom loved magic. Virgil could picture the king and his father, hunting in the woods together, telling each other boisterous stories in the pub, just being happy together before the queen came into their life. That has to count for something. 

Of course, by the time Virgil moved in, the queen had the king firmly under her thumb. Virgil only got bits and pieces of conversation from him now, and even then, the queen rarely deigned to allow them time together.

His slow approach to the thorn wall slows to a stop as the sick tugging in his guts grows. 

The gnarled monstrosity in front of him, called by the citizens on the outside of it, “iron forest,” towers over him, the path he had come from sealed once more. 

They never sealed a knight who was on a mission out before. The path here was usually kept open for them when they left until they returned or for a week after the news reached the castle that any of them had perished. It was a sign of good will and freedom to return if any of them actually survived their encounter. 

Virgil hasn’t even been gone for a full week. 

The only people who could have communicated his injury were the men who attacked him and Dee, but he was with Dee the entire time and no fae was stupid enough to see Adelaide under any circumstances.

Virgil observes the break in between curls of iron. As a human, it would probably still be difficult terrain to walk through, but he’s flexible. 

He reaches out a hand to make contact with the iron, so he knows where not to be, but it comes right back. Baffled, he tried to poke the closest thorn. 

His finger burns. 

He’s not a fae. He left from here, when this path was open, no problem. He’d worn iron armor leaving the castle. Nobody can change someone’s entire DNA with magic. That wasn’t possible. 

_Wasn’t possible unless you made a deal,_ his traitorous brain hisses, sounding a little like Dee. The exact words, he tries to remember, they would help him figure out what happened. 

“I just want to make it out of this alive,” he mutters out loud, “Did I?” Dee had explained the deal as immortality, but he hadn’t been specific about the details of it.

Absently, as he thinks through that particular line of thought, he reaches out a hand to try and bend the thorn away from him. Crying out uselessly, he clutches his hand to his chest in anguish. The palm of his hand is raw with pain and sizzling from the touch. 

The blisters burn bright hot and the iron flares with the heat of magical repellent. 

He tries again. The iron glows orange. 

Once more he tries to push on the border, using his nails and covering his palms with the cloth of his sleeves. The border won’t budge and he is left outside. 

His last home. Blocked off from him forever. 

He would never get to see his mother or father’s faces again. Even when he tries to picture them now, the memories fade faster and faster. No more talks in his bedroom with the king, who would lose the glassy look in his eyes when they spoke sometimes. 

No more doing what his father had wanted for him. 

No more being a knight. 

He is disgusted at the relief that comes with the last thought, and the feeling is almost so strong it knocks him out of his spiraling. 

Still, the thought that all of that, his whole life before now, is just gone, it festers. It fills his throat and his eyes until he’s tearing at the iron wall in front of him again. His fingers slip and burn as he tugs on anything he can hold on to for longer than a second. He can feel something wet sliding down his forearms, and with a detached sort of fury, he realizes it's his blood. The wall stays closed, but he batters himself against it, leaving harsh streaks of red on the spikes. The dizziness sends him to the ground. 

Blurred vision he can’t wipe away, for fear of getting blood in his eyes, he stumbles back. Even a fae would probably die from wounds like these. He hadn’t exactly been kind to the wounds he got before because they hadn’t hurt that much then. He wonders if that would cost him now.

The skin of his hands, _Gods if there is any left even_ , Virgil thinks darkly, itches something fierce. He tries to blink the clouds out of his eyes. The skin of his hands is…? It’s knitting itself back together. New skin forms and patches back up to his fingertips, and his arms look good as new. 

The slow slide of red down the molten hot spikes of iron drips to the ground. It’s as though time itself groans. 

He stares blankly at the unmoving wall in front of him. “I just want to make it out of this alive,” he sputters, scoffing in disbelief. So Dee turned him into a fae? _Immortal_ , he remembers. Was there no other way that his wounds would heal? 

The blood covering his body doesn’t disappear after the wounds underneath it heal, the only evidence that he lost himself trying to get through the wall. 

If he can’t go home, there’s nowhere to go but back the direction he came from.

~|~

The ride back takes longer than it took to get to the castle. In the back of his mind, Virgil knows it’s odd that he remembers the way back to the scaled fae’s house, but honestly, riding through the woods dripping in slowly drying blood feels odd enough he doesn’t care.

His fingers can’t seem to curl around the reins, to Julep’s discontent. In his exhaustion, he just barely notices the way the bushes and bramble seem to creep closer, nudging him back to steady, from his slipping balance on his saddle. Every time he gets close, Julep whines and speeds up just a tad.

This day might just get worse. 

The house looks different than it did before he left, none of the creatures roaming about like they had while he was there last. A day’s ride is so close to the castle, and he wonders how he never knew that there was such a place right under his nose.

Even though his hands are so sensitive, knocking seems to be the only option, so he leans on Julep and lets her nudge him up the stairs. The door to the home feels more daunting than it did the last time he left through it. He just can’t understand, Dee had seemed so _nice_. The fae nursed him through an injury, let the creatures in when he’d asked, and told him fantastic stories. It just didn’t fit right in his head. 

He knocks three times.

Waiting for a moment, he turns to Julep and sighs. There’s no response. Knocking again won’t do anything, he thinks, and he’s made the journey for nothing, probably to die somewhere in the woods tonight if he was left alone. There’s nowhere else to go.

“Well, Julep. What’s the next plan?” He strokes her mane, his now dry hands still stained red. “We should probably get you cleaned off first. We probably stink.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t say you smelled good,” A woman walks into the clearing from further into the Evergreen. “Who are you?”

“You may call me Vee,” he replies warily, “What can I call you?”

“Queen would be fine, but Val will suffice, if you choose to stick around,” she circles him easily, with a confidence he could only aspire to feel one day, “I didn’t know Adelaide kept fae knights.”

Virgil flinches at the reminder, leaning a little more on Julep. “She doesn’t,” The blood looks that much more obvious against her white coat. “Obviously.”

“Then how…?” She ponders, stopping and sitting on the top step of Dee’s home, gesturing to all the seals on his bags.

“I made a deal with Dee. I need to speak to him, if you know where he is, uh,” Adelaide prefers ‘your majesty’ but this fae had clearly said Queen, “Queen.” He adds a hasty bow for good measure.

“Please, I’m a queen, not a tyrant,” She waves her hands around, gesturing him up. “Dee will be back in a few hours. He’s on a mission for me.”

“Ah,” He replies awkwardly, “I see.” Shifting to look in his bag, he realizes he probably shouldn’t turn his back on royalty. Adelaide had never liked when he did that. “Sorry, I-”

“You seem skittish, little fae,” Val looks every bit of royalty Adelaide never had. There’s this kindness in her eyes he almost doesn’t recognize. The last person to look at him like that was his mother. “Are you well?”

“Um, no,” He startles as the word comes out of his mouth. “Uh, I mean,” and then he chokes, tripping over his feet to the ground as tremors rake his body, his ribs rattling with the force of his coughs. 

“Oh my gods,” Val is at his side in seconds as he hacks out his lungs. “Did Dee just leave you like this? You can come to my place, and I can yell at him when he gets back.”

After he’s finished wheezing, he replies, “He didn’t leave me like this. He turned me into a fae and I don’t know _why_ , I don’t know _anything_ anymore,” His voice grates with desperation in his own ears and his chest feels like it's going to collapse in on itself, and he _hates_ it. “I can wait here.”

“That’s definitely not possible.” Val looks around the field. He can sense they are being watched, but he can’t tell where the eyes are. The disorienting nature of the coughs had done a number on him, being paired with the blood loss. “Besides, you can’t stay outside, it isn’t safe.”

“You called me ‘little fae’,” He doesn’t make it to the stairs before stumbling, flinching as she tries to steady him, but too weak to fight off her grip, too nervous to even try, “You know I can’t lie, then.”

She deposits him on the stairs with ease. “Okay, so you believe it. It doesn’t make sense, though. And I’m not letting you wait alone in this state.” Virgil can feel the shudder going through the trees, like a magical ‘back off’ as she glares at the woods.

“I can stay here. The cats will keep me company,” He touches the ground lightly, and the eyes come out of the woods. Two tabby cats break the tree-line but hesitate at the sight of Val. “I won’t wait alone.”

She stares at him, disbelieving. “Then you won’t mind one more.” She says firmly. Clearing her throat, she waits for him to respond, releasing her stare at the edge of the tree-line. 

Virgil hesitates as the cats crawl up to him, nuzzling into his hands and purring. If he takes up more of her time, he might be punished later, but if he insists against her word now in front of creatures of the Evergreen, he might not live to see later. “Of course,” he settles on, finally, uneasy. 

Getting comfortable on the stair below him, she begins to hum gently, at first, a beautiful melody, like something he would consider a lullaby if he wasn’t so paranoid at being shown her back. Adelaide would have never put herself at risk like this. Then her tune gets louder, more intrusive, like she’s trying to call something, and Virgil is shaking, still not recovered from the day’s strain on his body. With a final call into the air, Val stands, the world spins, and Dee is in front of them, sending him back into the darkness behind his eyes.

~|~

There’s a fae in Dee’s guest room. 

There are several problems with that, the first being that he was not fae the last he was here. His deal was meant to be more of a cure than a curse. Nellie had deserved better than the death she got, assigned a murder from the human kingdom’s queen, to meet such a cruel fate. 

In the bed, Vee turns, grumbling as he curls into himself, snuffling into his pillow. If he wasn’t covered in dried blood, he may have looked his age. He’s too young to have been assigned a mission like this one alone. Dee knows the way _her_ court works. A sick feeling wells in his gut at the thought of her sending fae to their deaths because she didn’t want to kill them herself. 

The second problem, the more pressing problem, is that Dee had been wrong. Not just about Vee’s human status, but also his will to live the same way he did. Dee knows the games Adelaide plays, remembered returning to her side over and over, even when she clearly didn’t have what was best in mind for Romulus. Even when she kept him away from Linus. 

If Vee had been able to return to the kingdom, he might have done the same, living with Adelaide until she killed him herself or going mad until he wished she’d do it just to be done with it. 

His final problem is Val. When he finally leaves the doorway to Vee’s room, he finds her making herself at home, picking herself out a book and refusing to leave until Vee wakes. She’s set on sitting in his library for the next few hours, and if he is being honest, the scent of her magic is going to stain everything in there and take weeks to get out, the smell of flowers and frost, like floral freezer burn, embedded into the pages of all his books. Studiously ignoring his presence when he came into the room was annoying enough, but she would huff and turn around, pulling her legs over the bench easily to avoid looking directly at him so he couldn’t sign at her.

To say the least, his life has had better moments.

Val takes breaks from ignoring him to check on Vee. He’s doing fine, considering he was within feet of a full siren fae blast. His body had barely adjusted to his fluxing magic levels from the deal, and if he’d been any weaker, it might have had more severe consequences. They’re decently lucky his body had begun to repair itself immediately after he passed out. The fact that he’s healing at all seems to be of no comfort to Val, who spends her minutes at his beside feeling sorry and guilty before flitting away to keep herself occupied with something else.

~|~

They are finally given relief in the form of Vee waking up, scaring Val straight out of her seat when he swipes up a cat that had been meowing around her feet and cuddling it close. The young fae didn’t even open his eyes to do it, just made some _murrping_ noises at the small creature and settled back into his sheets.

Val pauses at the action, which took place in between the space of blinks. “Does he always do that?”

“It’s entirely abnormal,” Dee grins, poking at him from a respectable distance away. “He doesn’t like the cats.” 

She tugs a heavy blanket closer to the boy, “When you wake up, we have much to discuss, little fae.” 

The scene is domestic and lovely and it makes him itch in the worst way, so he prods Vee even harder over the blankets. He makes sure to wiggle his fingers, plopping down next to him until he swipes a hand out. “You aren’t cold, right? This is fine, right?” Teasing, he keeps pulling his hand so he can’t put them back under the blankets. “I haven’t got you.”

Vee grumbles and opens one eye just enough to make a stab at hitting him, but his lethargy just makes him slow. He sloppily clips his arm half-heartedly. Dee grins.

“If you two are done being children, I think I am owed some sort of explanation. Hopefully, the truth?” Val interrupts, waving a hand between them. Vee puts his hands over his ears almost immediately and she winces, lowering her voice, “Only if you want, of course.”

“You _shouldn_ ’ _t_ drop your hands, kid. She’s not royalty or anything.” Dee mummers to Vee when she turns her head. He sees her ears prick, but Vee obeys and warily drops his hands, fidgeting with the edge of his sheets, flinching as he sees them. Dee had done his best to get the worst of the blood off while he was asleep, but he imagines they may still be sensitive. “Do you need anything?” He says louder, more for Vee’s benefit than anyone else's.

He seems to realize where he is very abruptly, eyes skipping over him and Val and darting around the room, catching on the bed and the cats and the door. Catching his breathing, the cats plop in his lap and around him, pawing at his chest. He places a hand on the littlest tabby’s head, gently pushing her ears back. “I need a lot. I need to know why you turned me into a fae. I need to know why you sent me home happily when you knew I couldn’t get back. Does this shit wear off? How do I go home? _Do_ I go home? Or do I watch from afar as my life moves on without me?”

“Some _life_ you had over there,” Dee doesn’t contain himself, and it only makes Vee angry.

“What he means,” Val glares at him, “Is that a life with Adelaide hardly constitutes a life when you’re constantly under her thumb.”

“What are you talking about? I was never under her thumb,” Vee protests. Reaching out a hand, Val passes a hand over his head, looking surprised at Dee.

“He really wasn’t,” She says, pulling back. “At least, not magically.”

“ _Not_ shocking, considering where he was,” He keeps his inflection calm and doesn’t look in their direction. “It wouldn’t do for you to know how she treated me.”

Vee sits up in shock, “You knew Adelaide?”

“I knew none of the inhabitants of that castle. If they were there twenty years ago, I didn’t know them.” Keeping his gaze on the ceiling, he shifts uncomfortably. “Val, why don’t you tell the story? You don’t know the majority of it.”

“I know it,” Val says, but she stares at him unblinking. “You should tell it, though. It’s yours, not mine.”

He mulls it over for a moment. Vee has never heard the story of his banishment, at least, he doesn’t know a majority of the details concerning the way he lived in the castle. If he remembered anything at all from when he was wounded, it may make the stories easier to tell, but Dee didn’t hold out hope for any of that.

Instead, he starts by signing, “Are you fluent?”

At Vee’s nod, he starts his story.

~|~

Deceit was a fae in good standing with the king, back when he wasn’t really Deceit. A very pretty one in fact, his scales rainbow colored and as sharp as his grin, smooth to the touch, but knife like edges. He never used to play harsh tricks, just little ones like switching the jams in the treats the pastry chefs made for dessert, the strawberry jam for lemon custard so he could eat them too. 

One day, around the time the king decided to watch his borders a little more closely on his queen’s advice, Adelaide’s favorite broach went missing, replaced with a small coral snake. It was a harmless little thing, but she accused Deceit of theft and told him to change it back. Unfortunately, Dee never changed her broach, and couldn't reverse the magic, no matter what he did. When he said as much, she got angry, saying he really was like all the other nasty fae, just like the ones of the winter court, and that he was lying. 

Hurt, Dee told them that he could only tell the truth, he was a fae after all. Those parts of himself were unavoidable. The queen, vicious and mean, told the court wizard to curse dee and make him tell the truth. The wizard knew that he was already telling the truth, and told her he couldn't do it as fae magic made it so already. She stated if that was the case, then make him human. 

He and the wizard had been friends, had been close, even, if it could be said. The exact moment he gave in, Deceit knew. The wizard was scared of the backlash from Adelaide, and Dee knew it could be him or it could be both of them. He turned his head.

The wizard made an attempt to pull the fae magic from Dee, only for a moment. The moment was enough. Dee’s scales turned a sickly yellow, and one of beautiful rainbow eyes drained of color, cursed into the same mucus color his scales turned, the feeling unlike one he had ever felt before. He begged and pleaded, asking what they’d done to him, in too much pain to see the effects, but what was done was done. 

Even as his magic returned, he couldn't fix himself. Then, he tried to open his mouth, only to find himself confessing to changing the broach, saying he was telling the truth. Horrified, he tried to tell the wizard what he had done, only for the words to spill ‘ _you cured me_ ,’ to spill out when what he wanted to say was ‘ _you made me rotten._ ’

The wizard himself couldn’t answer, in so much pain himself, he was hunched over himself on the floor, pulled from the room as the queen gestured for the guards to get him out of sight.

The queen banished him and left him outside the kingdom to die alone. His ruined eye, though despicable to look at, could see into the very souls of humans now. The wizard had given him that much. Val found him at the edge of the Evergreen, minutes away from death, and had taken them to the river to be healed properly. The rest is history.

~|~

Dee drops his hands, exhausted and ashamed. That story is hard enough to get through, but retelling it like this always opens him up to the possibilities of nightmares somewhere down the road if he chooses to sleep.

Vee stays slumped against the headboard for a long moment. Then he reaches a cat out. “They help me when I feel like shit. Maybe they’ll help you too.”

“How mean,” Dee smiles, a little fond despite himself. “I think the snakes don’t turn them off.” 

“I’ll find you a snake-friendly cat then,” Vee vows sincerely. It’s sweet, especially for someone who seemed so unsettled by the thought of not being able to return home minutes ago.

“Don’t get some rest. You can’t stay here for the time being. If you really want to go back to the castle, we won’t see what we can do,” Dee pointedly does not acknowledge the smile playing on the corner of Val’s mouth. The queen doesn’t tease him out loud, but she offers him the raise of an eyebrow and a mischievous look when they turn back. “Don’t get better for now.”

Vee goes back to being horizontal and relaxes back in the bed. “Okay. Promise you told me the truth?”

“I lied the whole way through, kid,” He grins and shuts the door behind Val and himself, the echo of quiet laughter following them out.


	3. the lights are on and everybody’s home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A witch in the woods with her head held high, a host of fae are wondering why.

There are reasons for the things the queen did, and then there are excuses. Her reason is simple. For years, she wished to create a proper heir to the throne. Gods only knew, she was never going to let herself be succeeded by _Virgil_ of all people. He was uncontrollable, wild, dirty magic, and what was worse, he didn’t even _know_. She needed someone who would listen to her, someone who would allow her reign to flourish and bring true magic back to the land. She didn’t need Virgil, she needed a child of her own, two. Her excuse for two, just in case the first one didn’t have her magic. Excuses always have consequences.

She tried and tried, but with no success, she made a choice that would change the course of the kingdom’s future forever. She sought out the fae queen.

~|~

Valerie was used to the calls of humans. When it was cold, she sang life into their crops, and when it was warm, she touched the ground with ice so they might escape the sun, skate, and play. Back before the witch took her seat on the throne, fae were welcomed into the human kingdoms with open arms.

These days, the humans have all but ceased to call her. As much as she avoids the border for fear of knights, humans avoid the border for fear of fae. It makes her stomach turn, but she doesn’t even have to put up guard around to dissuade them from entering the Evergreen anymore. 

Regardless of the fact, she does put up a patrol around the northern border, and there’s no one more surprised than her when they summon for her one autumn night.

She gets her steed and sets off in the direction of the call. Three of her guards form a circle at the edge of the wood. “What’s happened?”

“The witch has entered the Evergreen. Lauren is missing from her post, she didn’t answer when we raised the alarm,” Toby responds coolly. “Kai’s gonna pitch a fit if he finds out. Finding her is top priority.”

There aren’t many places Adelaide knows about, luckily for them. If Valerie remembers correctly, Dee only ever told her about the court. He never mentioned telling her about his home, but that doesn’t mean Adelaide won’t stumble across some other poor unsuspecting fae before she reached her destination. “Get to the Lapointe estate in case she goes after Dee, I’ll catch up to her if she goes to the court.”

Yanking on the reins, she does a full turn to go back to the court. Dee wouldn’t have told her a direct path, just a general location supported by the fact that they hadn’t crossed paths as Valerie rode to meet her guards. That means she has time. Urging her horse just a tad faster, she hopes she gets there before her.

~|~

“It’s a nice place you’ve got here,” Adelaide circles the throne room lazily, her plate mail clinking as she walks. Her steed stands by the entrance, large and imposing as Valerie pulls up to the edge of the room. The pearlescent marble under the witch’s bare feet glimmers in the moonlight. “If I were you, I’d never leave.”

Valerie dismounts her horse. “I like to know the people I’m ruling,” her mouth twists into a grimace. “They trust me because they know me.”

The witch doesn’t miss the slight, allows it with a tilt of her head and a slight smile. “I’ve come to seek a treaty-”

“Then you may leave,” She responds sharply, imitating Adelaide’s smile.

Adelaide shakes her head, loose red hair spilling around her neck, taking a seat on _her_ throne, making her bristle, “Come now, don’t be rude. If you don’t want peace, I have plenty of your fae in my kingdom who wish to return to the Evergreen, and it would be a shame if they never made it back.”

“If _you_ wanted peace, you would’ve sent your husband,” Valerie doesn’t quite snap, controlling her tone, “And you wouldn’t have touched Lauren.”

“Oh, was she important? Don’t worry, she’s still in the forest. If she’s a real knight, she’ll find her way back. You should really train them better if you think a little displacement spell will kill them, Mab,” The witch leans back, completely relaxed. “The treaty will return her, and all your people, if you so wish to make a deal.”

“My people?” Valerie echoes hollowly. “Do better than that.”

“The fae in the castle will all be back, as per your wishes, but I need a deal first.” Her teeth shine, light catching on a fang, as she smiles, “Who knows what would happen if they tried to pass through the iron wall on their own, no?”

She’s been staking out the knight’s exit for a very long time, enough time that it might’ve caught her attention. “What have you done?”

“Nothing,” Her nails glint as she studies them, the _disrespect_ , taking her eyes off Valerie, “Not yet, anyways.”

Valerie’s lip curls in disgust. “What do you seek, mortal?”

“Finally!” She drops her arms to the armrests and pushes herself up, “Two children for the safety of your people on their return to you.”

“No, ‘my people’ is a term that only includes winter fae, and ‘on their return’ is not true safety, be more specific,” If the queen of the human kingdom wished to play it like that, she would have to try harder.

“Okay, fine, give me a moment,” The queen ponders, her finger tapping innocently on her chin like she has never done anything wrong in her life. Valerie can’t stop imagining the blood from Dee’s throat coating her fingers. Adelaide is not human and she is not fae. Revenge is not something Valerie could execute without risk, but Adelaide has to pay. Her eyes narrow. “I would like to give birth to two children and in exchange for helping me, I will return all the fae that lived in this forest alive and unharmed.”

“And I shall grant you this on one condition,” Valerie begins to craft the magic. If she does this right, the Evergreen would get an heir despite her wish to remain without a romantic partner. If she didn’t, Imagi would end up with two heirs. “If you go back on your word, your firstborn child shall be mine.”

The queen’s face sets in determination. “I agree to the terms. In fact, as a gesture of goodwill,” she waves a hand, and Lauren collapses on the floor from thin air, gasping for breath as her feet scrape the ground, running behind Val.

“Very well,” Valerie runs a gentle hand over Lauren, taking the remaining magic that clings to her skin. “Now, get out of my forest. You never asked for protection while you were here, and to have the children, you must first get out alive. I suggest,” She hands the queen a leaf coated in her magic, which glows in the witch’s hand, “you start running.”

~|~

Adelaide’s screams echo throughout the castle halls, and Terrence has never had a bigger headache, the pressure of old magic pushing down on the space in his skull behind his eyes. Tonight is the night that the twins would be born and if the awful sounds echoing down the hallways could be trusted, the twins are most definitely being born. 

With the climate in the castle, he knows that as a fae, he has a greater duty to the rebellion tonight than he did to Adelaide. Any loyalty he had to offer her ended the moment she put up the wall. 

A deal, she’d said, that she made with Valerie to have a child and in return she wouldn’t harm any fae that swore loyalty to her. 

Bullshit. 

His messages couldn’t reach Valerie if he sent them. Adelaide made sure of it when she closed the walls and leashed their magic. Any words spoken ill of her were bound to get back to her, so instead, he said nothing at all, waiting patiently for his time to come.

Tonight, there would be an opportunity. Terrence knows as well as any fae does of the little one of their kind growing in the queen. If the deal was what he thinks it is, the magic of the Evergreen will make it such that the child is returned, and with it, the balance of deals made in the forest fulfilled. 

With the wolf star directly overhead, he lets the magic guide him through the halls, unseen. He watches as Adelaide denies the babe any touch, any comfort as he enters the world as his screams pierce the night. In a daze, he follows a maid to the nursery, picking up the baby, far too light and far too small for who Terrence knows he will be. 

The child is unnamed, unmoored to the land. His pointy ears wiggle as he yawns. Even now, Terrence coos at the sight of little tips of white fangs peeking out from his gums. The magic coming from the child is neon, not quite of the Evergreen, but not anything he’s seen from any magic user either. 

This is him, Valerie’s child. No power in the world, let alone a wall, could have stopped them from riding out into the night.

~|~

Lauren is stationed at the base of the throne room when Terrence rides in.

“We need an audience with the queen,” Terrence clutches the bundle to his chest as tight as he can. “Please tell her it’s urgent.” 

The tiny fae is starting to squirm in his blankets as she books it up the stairs and no matter how cute the babe is, Terrence is entirely ill equipped to handle it. The child has barely been in the world a full day, but he still has no name, no prospects. By blood he is royal, but the way Adelaide practically scrambled away from him denied him a place in that castle. 

The queen descends the spiraling stairs behind her throne, the cool ice-like structure making her look twice as alluring as usual, and Terrence, like most who ever receive the honor of being in her presence, is enchanted.

“Who in the gods’ names is calling me down so late? Is it really important?” She yawns and stretches, her sleek light blue robe falling in waves around her. “I really don’t see the point in-”

With a fond smile on his face, he can identify the exact moment she sees him.

“Terrence!” She runs down the steps at full tilt towards him, and he swings the baby closer and hunches in to protect him as her arms come down across his shoulders. “Terrence, you’re okay,” She pulls back and her hands stay on his shoulders as she kisses both his cheeks then leans back to get a better look at him, “You are okay, right? I swear, if that witch laid a finger on you, I’ll have her skull as an ornament.” Her eyes land on the baby. “Oh, darling, you never said anything about a child.” 

She sweeps up the child, thoroughly distracted with his clear green eyes. “I’m fine,” He starts, amused with the way she dances away with the baby. “He isn’t mine, you know?” She hums as she dances away and the child giggles. “He’s yours.”

Valerie stops dead in the middle of the throne room, her eyes never leaving the babe’s, the echo of her footsteps fading into silence. “Excuse me?” Her voice is untethered, the same way the babe’s magic feels, white just like the frost that forms at her fingertips in shock.

“He isn’t named yet, Adelaide didn’t bother. She gave birth to him last night.” He hands her the certificate detailing the time of his birth, “Right under the wolf star. He’s her first born.”

She holds him just a touch closer, nudging his nose with her own, to the child’s delight. “I did say he would be mine, didn’t I?” Her voice has softened the same way it did when she took the crown all those years ago. 

Staring at the child, Val reaches her free hand towards him, and he takes it because he has to and he has missed her more than she would ever know.

“You’ve come back to me,” Her hand squeezes tight around his hand, “And you are safe,” Her voice breaks on a cry as the child begins to warble out a sob.

Terrence forces the longing to stay back down to his stomach where it belongs. “But there are others still trapped in the castle,” He doesn’t want to say goodbye so soon. “And I have to go back before Adelaide notices I took him.”

He doesn’t want her to hope for him to stay. It will make it that much harder for him to leave. Her magic is too strong though the moon is still a crescent above their heads.

She leans her head against his chest and he can feel her tears on his shirt, and he can do nothing more than keep his arms around her.

“Under the wolf star, you said?” She hums a shaky tune under her breath and the baby stares up at her in awe. He nods to her question. “Then his name shall be Remus.” 

The magic floods the room, and it has been ages since he has really felt connected to the forest, but he can feel the change in hierarchy in the woods themselves. Mother and son glow green the way he has only seen potions of a particularly dangerous nature shine. It’s as if their very souls are visible.

She is so pained yet so joyful when she says, “He’s mine,” The two of them continue to look at each other, and Terrence can feel the power they radiate unfiltered and raw. It bleeds into his skin in a way that he knows he’s going to smell of it for days. “He’s so fae, Terr. You can feel it, just look at him,” her tone is already as full of warmth and love as her heart is. Choking back her own cries, she stands tall, her eyes still glowing bright, and smiles. 

Terrence can feel her leaving him before even she speaks.

“You will be safe on your return.” Her voice has taken on this ethereal echo, the way it does when she can’t quite cap her energy. The babe blinks and his eyes are now a blazing, neon green, and for the first time since he left the castle, Terrence feels at peace.

“Thank you, Val.” He unwraps his arms and leans down so she can grant him one last kiss on the forehead. “Wish me luck.”

She smiles and cradles her child to her chest. “You won’t need it. I _will_ see you soon.” Her tune starts to reverberate through the walls and the trees and the sky. 

He rides under the cover of night, her melody following him through the break of dawn and all the way to his bed where his eyes close, restful and safe in his queen’s song.


	4. bury me in memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Virgil might have left it alone if it was just him. He might have let sleeping dogs lie. But, there are fae still in the castle, and any thought he had of being a bystander went out the window.

Dee’s story won’t leave his head and it’s been days. Virgil knows Adelaide. He knew her before he knew himself. His mother told him she was trying to do too many things, but he saw the way she moved. She always gave off the energy that felt like she knew exactly what she was doing. She’s the whole reason he has any amount of distrust in the fae. It’s just that when she put up the wall, regardless of what his parents said, regardless of what he _knew_ , she sounded so _sure_.

In comparison to Dee, she’d been much more cagey about her past. Dee had told his story despite his verbal roadblock, signing it out to a total stranger. Despite all the time he spent with Adelaide and her complete distrust of fae, he trusted Dee. Adelaide never said a word about who she was before she married the king. As far as Virgil knows, his father hadn’t even known where she’d come from when Romulus announced his intention to court her.

The queen never told anyone her intentions, never did her dirty work herself, especially if she was sure it wouldn’t come back to haunt her. Her knights carried most of that work. She didn’t see Virgil off. She didn’t give him time to see the king before he left. She insisted he go alone.

She tried to kill him. That much is clear. 

The fact that nags at the back of his mind the most is the way the town was empty. The mission had been clear, a town in danger needed a creature taken care of.

Nellie had been the only one killed in the whole ordeal, all because of a curse, probably performed by one of Adelaide’s more magical minions. He doubts Thomas would have agreed to do the deed, but he’s been the court wizard for longer than Virgil has lived in the castle, long enough that he’s probably the one who cursed Dee. If what he did to Dee was true, then really anything is possible, isn’t it? A bitter taste stays in the back of his throat, as his hands flex, his skin uncomfortably tight around his fingers.

Another thing is there were only so many people who knew where he was going. Yet, against all odds, the thugs seemed to know exactly who he was. Only Adelaide had known where he was going down to the exact location. The king had known but he was hardly in a state to communicate the information to anyone else. 

The knight’s pass being shut just about confirmed what he had tried so hard to deny. Virgil would never be welcomed home.

He wants to storm up the stairs of the castle, march right up to Adelaide and shove his survival in her face. He wants to know if she would get mad, or if she would tell him why. He wants to get past that damn wall.

Clenching his fists, he winces at the phantom pains that tingle across the nerves of his palms. No need to put himself through that again.

Every night he stays with Dee, the thought infiltrates under his skin. 

There is talk in the Evergreen about a deal, from the Queen to Adelaide, and it seems there are already fae celebrating a win. It’s not even like he knows many, just the ones who stop by Dee’s house, congratulating him on finally taking an apprentice, nodding at Virgil and grinning. He just stays with the cats as much as possible, smiling and agreeing when appropriate, going with whatever Dee’s new story is. 

Still, he picks up every rumor he can overhear without looking suspicious. 

Adelaide was heavily pregnant when he left, so he’s fairly certain there would be some kind of celebration when the child finally comes. Visiting fae talk about such gifting ceremonies with something akin to disdain, but some of the more excitable Seelie who visited seemed thrilled at a chance to get into the castle. The temporary truce in the name of new life had been the main subject from what he could understand. While he couldn’t hear all of it, he knew enough to know the wall couldn’t possibly be up if fae were permitted to enter.

If what the other fae say is true, the children would only be another day, and it’s with that thought in mind that he sets out for the iron wall. Adelaide wanted fae at the ceremony to give gifts. He’s willing to oblige her this one last time.

~|~

Adelaide loves her baby. He may not be her firstborn, but he has her green eyes and when he wiggles, she thinks maybe he’s better than anything she’s seen in her life. She’s only had her beautiful child for a day, and every minute she spends with him is better than the previous. 

Romulus is enraptured with the night, staring out the window when she enters his chambers.

“We have such reason for celebration,” Adelaide coos, her baby snuggled to her chest, blinking curiously up at her, “Isn’t he perfect? Don’t you just love our son?”

Romulus lights up at the mention, “Virgil has returned?” He doesn’t even turn to her, and when she blocks his view, frowning, he raises an eyebrow. “Yes, my dear?”

“ _Our son_ , not your ward,” Her eyes narrow, but in that moment, Roman giggles and reaches up for her hair, tugging when he manages to get a good grasp. Hissing, she nearly drops the babe, would’ve if it hadn’t been for Romulus’ reflexes, catching him from under her.

“Who is this?” He gazes fondly at Roman stroking his russet hair back off his forehead, laughing as the child makes motions for his beard. Mentally seething, Adelaide reaches for him, but Romulus holds back, “It’s a babe, he doesn’t know what he’s done. No concept of royalty, this one,” He’s gentler with him than he has been with her for some time, despite all the overwriting she’s done.

She doesn’t know whether it should be fitting or not that he doesn’t even remember this child. “Roman is our son,” Keeping her derision out of her tone for now, she adds, “Virgil is not going to return.”

His expression is neutral, but she recognizes the tension around his eyes anywhere. Oh, she so hates when he tries to fight back. “What,” his voice is so serious, like he really thinks he’s accomplishing anything, like he can even be a threat at this point, “Have you done to our ward?”

“Nothing, dear, he isn’t even someone you’ll miss after tonight, with our perfect Roman,” Adelaide makes her smile the one she knows he likes to see, the one he fell in love with organically, “Besides, isn’t he just enchanting? The people are going to love having a proper heir!”

And sometimes she forgets that before he was hers, he was a knight, and before he was magicked, he had people who loved him and people he loved. “Where is Virgil?” He repeats, but this time, he stands, looming over her, a physical presence, and she remembers her family and why she is here and, and, _and_ -

And he sits heavily in his chair again, stumbling, her hand buried in his curls, her baby still safe in his arms. Her tense shoulders release as she looks at the view he seemed so fond of earlier. It’s all for a reason, she reminds herself. Now, she has Roman, and Roman will understand.

Roman makes a noise of confusion when tugging on Romulus’ beard does nothing. He doesn’t know anything now, but he will, eventually.

Sighing, she takes in the glassy look in Romulus’ eyes, picks up her child, and leaves the room.

~|~

It takes him longer than he expects to reach the border. Julep hesitates at the wall, but the north gates are wide open, a rare treat, as this door has always been the entrance closest to the border of the Evergreen. 

His hands tingle as he passes through, and he shoves them deep into the pockets of the jacket he’d borrowed from Dee. The sleeves cover his hands, too long to really be fitting, but they cover up the fact that they don’t stop shaking even as he clutches Julep’s reins. 

The entrance to the castle is decorated nicer than usual, the cobblestone path doused in light from the lanterns lining the streets. It hasn’t looked like this since Adelaide married the king. His father hadn’t been in favor but he and Virgil had laughed on their way back to the manor, the lantern they snuck home ( _the one they stole_ ) safely in the back of their carriage. His mother had smiled fondly at their antics.

The leather bites into his skin as his grip tightens. He leads her to the crowd of other horses, hiding near the base of the staircase leading to the main doors. Aside at last, he leans his head on her smooth white coat. “Am I doing the right thing?” He whispers into her side. She wuffles at him, backing up and nosing at the side of his head. “I know, but I’m-” A shiver racks his body and he curls into her further despite the warm air, “I’m upset.”

She tosses her head, and moves to get comfortable with the other horses. 

“Right,” he sighs and pulls himself up to his full height. “Right, okay.”

He climbs the stairs before he can talk himself out of it.

~|~

Adelaide’s knights are right where he knows they will be. They crowd around the food tables, laughing and joking together, the perfect replica of the dreams he’s been having of his father’s stories lately. They don’t look like they’re missing a piece. They don’t sound like he’s not there.

It’s the end of spring, and every knight is dressed in outfits with minimal armor, but every knight still wears iron. He spots a dagger or bracelet on most of them, and even though he’s just walking past them, they emphasize the nauseous feeling in his gut when he feels its presence.

The queen herself is dressed to the nines in a dark blue dress that trails behind her whenever she moves. Her red hair is braided back in two long lines down her back, and her child lies in his bassinet close to her. She keeps a dutiful hand on the cradle as guests come and greet her.

He can see that she has foregone her usual iron. Inviting Evergreen fae was a political gesture and he can only assume she was trying not to offend anyone. He can feel other fae in the building, knows that there is at least one on the knights. Briefly, he wonders how he gets around wearing the iron armor, zeroing in on anything that can distract him from the amount of the metal in the room.

Adelaide pulls him out of his distraction with a loud clap that echoes around the room. “Attention, esteemed guests of Imagi, attention! It is time to celebrate this new era of peace within our kingdom, and unite at the gift I have received in the form of a son,” She picks up the child as gently as possible it seems with how slowly she moves, “Look,” Smiling tearfully, she turns him to the crowd, “Look at my son!” 

The crowd cheers and claps at his presence and the little child himself seems to react, waving his arms at all the eyes and encouraging noises directed at him. 

“Soon, we will be joined by any visiting fae, as well as the fae who live within this kingdom, who have so wonderfully renounced their powers in favor of staying here, for our gifting ceremony. I ask you to welcome them during their brief stay,” She smiles as he mouths at his fist, “He deserves everything.” She’s uncharacteristically intense as she finished the sentiment, the whole party silent after her speech. 

Placing him back in the cradle, she lets out a tinkling laugh, sending her guests into another round of cheers, the hall feeling full and fine for a moment.

“Thank you to everyone who has already gotten my prince a gift, and thank you for coming,” She steps back towards her throne, the king smiling with glazed eyes next to her, “Please enjoy the band, dance and be merry!”

As the orchestra starts into another set, Virgil can tell the exact moment the king sees him, his eyes lighting up, finally sincere. “Virgil,” he calls happily. He tries to stand, but Adelaide extends a hand to keep him seated. His eyes stay clear as he beckons him closer instead, and Virgil follows his wish willingly.

Adelaide turns her beady eyes to him, her soft smile turning brittle and insincere. “Virgil,” Her insincerity is clear by her careful neutral tone. “A pleasure.”

Showtime.

~|~

Sitting in her throne, Adelaide wants to look at ease, but she can feel her fingers involuntarily curl and uncurl around the edge of the cradle to her side. Roman looks perfectly happy, but she can’t seem to make herself stop.There’s something strange in the air around Virgil. She can’t focus on the air around him, and he looks almost blurry. 

Still, she bows her head in a show of politeness. “I did not expect you back so soon.” There’s always the chance he doesn’t know, “How was your journey?”

He ponders his response for a moment. “Well enough, Queen Adelaide,” He’s never called her that once in his time around the castle, would never _dare_ say her name. His smile goes sharp around the edges, displaying new, slightly elongated canines. “As well as one can expect, when they get sent to their death, anyways.”

He knows.

“What is it? Are you surprised that I’m here, back at the castle or that I know what you did?” he pulls his top lip back at her pause, slightly reminiscent of her own snarl, “What you planned to do to me?”

Romulus is awake at her side. His lips quirk down as Virgil turns to him, ducking his head.

“Hello, King Cromwell,” Romulus reaches a hand out gently, “I hope you are well, your kingship.” She can feel his gaze on her as Virgil rises. “If you find it amenable, I wish to speak freely.”

“Virgil, you know you may call me Romulus, and you may always speak your mind,” He says, turning his full attention to his ward, and she feels that same dread in the bottom of her stomach that she felt in their rooms, “You know I value your insight.”

“Thank you, your grace,” Adelaide takes a sharp breath as she realizes why she can’t see him properly, “I seem to have come into some information that would benefit you.”

With a snap of her fingers, the party muffles around them, the full waltz turning into a slow turn as time slows around them. “Virgil, I’m sure you don’t-”

“Let the boy speak,” the king interrupts her, shifting comfortably in his seat. He leans on one elbow, his other arm coming down to rest on the armrest of the throne. His white knuckle grip on his throne arm releases as he looks down at Virgil. The child has always been good at negating her magic, now, probably even more so. “Continue, my boy.”

“The queen sent assassins after me, and after I was hunted, she closed the iron wall to prevent my return. Furthermore, I would like to discuss the value of the fae in this court and around the kingdom. I truly believe there might have been an error in judgement when it comes to the persecution of those with fae magic.”

Romulus will believe him. She knows him, his giant heart that trusted Linus and by extension his son, and she knows she’s going to lose if Virgil continues his campaign against her. 

He’s always been more resistant to her magic while Virgil was present. He was like an anchor, keeping him near the surface, keeping him awake, and wished he wouldn’t.

“Do you have proof of this accusation?” Romulus asks, soft as he always is with him.

“I am fae. My word serves as proof enough, but if you’d like further proof, there are more fae, ones in the castle and back in the Evergreen who are willing to speak to you.” Virgil raises his head and meets her eye, a feat he had been incapable of for so long, and she can’t concentrate on the color, the image so vivid but indecipherable. “She could tell you herself, if she would like to speak the truth.”

“I have to do nothing,” Placing a gentle hand on her king’s head, Adelaide takes a moment to revel in the relief that washes over her when he slips back under her thumb, not as easily as he had earlier, but still under, “I don’t want to fight, Virgil.”

He doesn’t budge, “Funny,” the room, still in slowed time, doesn’t see the flash of silver in his hand, “I came looking for a fight.”

“I tried my best. I tried to get you to go quietly. Could you not have just stayed dead?” She doesn’t bother giving him the satisfaction of watching him draw closer. He isn’t a real threat to her. “I kept you alive this long, but you wouldn’t stop asking to see him. He kept waking up.”

A snap of her fingers sends the hall back into full motion, time righting itself to its proper speed.

“What can you do in front of all of them?” Casually, she stands, keeping her fingers twirling a stray curl of Romulus’ around. “Your parents aren’t here to keep you safe anymore.”

“If it weren’t for your shitshow ruling, my dad would still be alive. My _mother_ would still be here.” he shifts his knife away, his frustration clear, “Don’t you dare insult what they went through to put me here.”

“Oh, Virgil, if I had anything to do with their deaths, don’t you think Romulus would have stopped me?” The corners of her mouth quirk up as the king doesn’t even twitch when his name is mentioned. “Virgil, there’s nothing left for you here.”

Virgil seems to melt for a moment, eyes flickering between her and the king, before finally settling on the crib she had walked away from. “There’s one thing left,” he says. Roman blinks sleepily up at her, but in a flash Virgil’s there and she’s _too far away_. “If you ever treat him like you did me, if you make him think he is not worthy, that he is not loved, if you ever, _ever_ , make him feel less, if you have not fixed your behavior by his twentieth birthday, his gift from me is that he will never have to put up with your bullshit again.”

Roman giggles in his arms, no longer sleepy, reaching chubby fingers towards him as the magic tries to wrap around her, and Virgil smiles at him.

“You will be happy, or she will pay the price with her life.”

The magic that forces its way onto her isn’t magic she recognizes. It’s something that hasn’t been issued for centuries, something she doesn’t know how to fight, and in a panic, she just pushes it away, fingers scrambling over her skin, trying to pry it off.

But it is old magic, and there is a price for denying it.

In the same breath that she is free, she watches in horror as the magic goes to the next available body that will hold it. 

_Roman_.

Virgil’s fingers feel like ice on her cheek, and she can’t move, _she’s in shock_ , “You will forget my name, and you will forget me,” he says, and she can’t concentrate on his face, she doesn’t even know what he _looks_ like, and she tries, she tries to remember and she _can’t_. All her work, it’s all gone in one night, her child, her _Roman_.

“You will remember me,” He tells Romulus, and for a moment, she thinks her king may say the fae’s name, but he doesn’t. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you more.”

And just like that, he’s gone, and she has the pieces of the world fallen down around her as she stares blankly at Roman’s crib.


	5. my kind’s your kind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee and Virgil are both of the Evergreen. They don’t already know this.

When he finds Dee sitting innocently at his dining table with nothing but a cup of tea and a saucer in front of him, Virgil knows he knows. 

“Did you know,” Dee starts, not looking up from his tea (Virgil can feel his barely contained glee from where he stands), “that Queen Valerie received quite the surprise this morning?”

He’s smirking like Virgil should already know. “No,” he attempts to shrug casually because it’s not technically a lie, “What surprise?”

“The queen certainly did not acquire a child,” His eyes light up, “And she _really_ didn't get the twin fae child of the one you just cursed, no, she did not.” He laughs and practically spins out of his seat to get a good look at Virgil, effectively cutting off his path to his room. “Why didn’t you invite me on your hunt? We wouldn’t have had any fun together! There’s always something as good as some classic bonding, cursing unsuspecting humans, stealing children, you know!”

Virgil exhales a long breath through his nose, trying to move around the fae. “You are way too excited about this.”

“Well, it’s only what I haven’t wanted for years,” Dee tilts his head forward facetiously, an arm blocking his exit again, “Horrible of you to give me an early birthday present.”

Virgil gives up trying to get to his room and takes the seat Dee vacated, but then his brain catches up with what Dee just said. “Wait, I didn’t curse the kid, I cursed the queen.”

“According to the Seelie that just came from the outskirts, you definitely did not get the kid, and your magic is super stable,” Dee shrugs, moving his cup to the sink, practically fluttering his hands in joy. “The kid’s a bad mark, and if he grows up anything like his mother, you’ll be sorry you did it.”

Virgil looks at Dee, who is still grinning, genuinely ecstatic for the first time since Virgil’s met him, and thinks, maybe this isn’t the worst thing. If the queen does raise the child herself, he doesn’t have that much hope for the kid, and with King Cromwell under her thumb, it’s unlikely the kid will know what life outside the citadel looks like.

“I can see it now,” He says. The deal is composed of a thick cord that holds strong. Even tugging on it now, he feels the prince, crying alone in a nursery, and can’t believe he didn’t feel it before, “I should probably break it.” 

“Sure, if you don’t want the death of a child on your hands. Magic doesn’t come with backlash.” Dee raises an eyebrow, and he hastily takes his hand back from the rope. “Besides there have been plenty of instinctive magic curses in fae history. It’s not like we don’t have the theory to even begin going about breaking it without killing you or the kid.”

He shakes his head and resolves to ignore the thing.

Dee is happy. It’s a shame, Virgil thinks. If what Virgil can recall about what he said is right, the young prince has twenty years to live, and nothing he does will affect the curse or change its course. It’s all up to Adelaide. 

He doesn’t dwell on the seed of guilt that starts to grow in his stomach. 

He doesn’t.

~|~

As much as he likes to focus on his misfortune, Virgil knows that when he can’t fix all his problems, it’s best to start with the ones he can handle. 

The thing is, Dee’s right. His magic is unstable in that he doesn’t know what he already did with it or how to use it, and if he can’t learn to put some sort of a leash on it, he’ll be reliant on Dee forever, which isn’t ideal. 

On the bright side, Dee seems delighted by the turn of events that is Virgil asking for magic lessons. They’ve started to learn to live with each other in the past couple weeks, Dee accommodating Virgil and teaching him how to do things around the estate, and Virgil carefully staying out of the way of Dee’s clients. This really is an extension of their preexisting lessons.

Dee starts them off by trying to figure out what sort of fae Virgil is. It would be going better if the only things he could talk about weren’t the way the plants lead him to Dee’s hide-away home in the Evergreen and the whole “curse” incident. 

“How did you get away from a full ballroom of knights and iron? The queen wouldn’t have been extra careful with the presence of a child,” Dee has about seven books open trying to figure out what Virgil’s fae history is made of. 

He shrugs, letting his shoulders slump in a little more, taking another bite of his food and ducking behind his bowl a little as Dee tosses another book to the side. “I heard the sound of breaking glass behind me? It sounded like your illusion breaking that first night we met, so I assume it was some kind of illusion magic. I just remember thinking I didn’t want them to see me leave. Illusions and plant-based magic are two very different things, though, so I don’t really understand how I would have both.”

Dee snorts, putting his own bowl down. “Even for a novice, you’ve got a horrible understanding of magic.” He brushes through his history of plant fae grimoire while frequently glancing from Virgil to the book. He turns the book so Virgil can see, “Match?”

Virgil looks at the portrait in the book of a fae with a wide face and a stubby nose and shakes his head. “I read a lot in the castle so I know a lot about magic. My mother’s collection told me about fae magic, but Adelaide’s collections taught me other kinds of magic. I moved most of her spellbooks and grimoires to my room, so even if the queen decides to go book burning, those would probably be safe. She probably doesn’t remember that I used to live in the west tower.”

The ache that comes with thinking about his old home isn’t new but he almost wishes the bittersweet feeling would go away. The castle always used to have the best view of the sunset and the most wonderful view of the full moon in the sky. Jam tarts were always a bonus too, especially when they got the ones with the special red jam. Those were things that made it really feel like home.

Dee turns the book around again. “This one?” 

Virgil stops thinking about the castle. 

The portrait shows an eager lady with sharp ears and elongated incisors and long silver blonde hair, about to pounce off the page. Her grin looks the same as his mother’s did before she hatched a plan to get them both in trouble. The manor staff used to hate that smile. 

“That one,” he swallows down and clenches his fists to hold back the tremors he feels coming on, but it just sends sharp stings of pain through his palms. No one had told him about being part fae. No one even suggested it before Dee. If the queen knew, she surely wouldn’t have allowed Romulus to take him in. “Well, we know why about the plants now, though I’m not really sure how diluted my ancestry is,” He fiddles with the sleeves of his hoodie, and the hollow feeling in his chest persists. Enough fae blood to be fully realized by a deal gone awry, but not enough to affect him for the first 17 years of his human lived life. 

Dee waves a hand and begins to put books away. “The real problem is that we know exactly why you have illusion powers like me,” The muttering increases as Virgil just sits at the table, head leaning against his palm watching as Dee pulls random books out at will, only to look through two or three pages and return them to the shelf. “Your existence as a fae makes complete sense.”

Today has already been too much, but at the very least they have a hint. “Thanks,” he replies dryly. “It’s not as though anyone told me there was a fae in my family tree somewhere. I would go back and look for the documentation if it didn’t mean getting captured and tortured for eternity for daring Adelaide.”

The scowl on Dee’s face makes him use an arm to cover the lower half of his face and stifle his snicker. 

“Yes, you could go back, and all my hard work, gone, just like that?” The sarcasm is evident in his voice, as he shoots his judgmental gaze towards Virgil, “Stunning idea.”

“Nah, I think you like me too much to let me do that anyways,” Virgil openly smiles at the fae as he huffs and returns his attention to the shelves. “You do.”

“If the universe had not given you to me as a gift,” The light from the window glances off his yellow scales, making them glow, “You wouldn’t be dead right now. You would do well not to remember that.”

“Yeah,” Virgil rounds the table and plucks Dee’s bowl from where it sits, heading to the sink, “You like me.”

He doesn’t interrupt him, lets the grumbles fill the air, the only noises Dee can make without outright lying or telling the truth in the way he does.

Dee is a lot easier to understand than whatever the queen had going on, and they got on fairly well. Virgil doesn’t think it would be the worst thing to stick around for a while. 

~|~

Watching Dee set up his tools for their first illusions lessons shouldn’t be as funny as it is. He left early that morning after breakfast with a cementing potion, tubes of sticking potion, and a basket of things he hadn’t let Virgil peak at.

When he’s finally allowed outside, he sees the monstrosities that Dee made in all their glory. There are trinkets of every sort pulled together from various places in the house that appear to be fashioned together into odd amalgamations. One is made up completely of porcelain doll legs in the shape of a duck and another is made up of small duck statues that have been organized into the shape of a person.

Ridiculous sculptures aside, Dee’s efforts come with a long lecture that Virgil only manages to absorb parts of. 

“These won’t do for now, but the basis of this is you needn’t be able to maintain the same image in your head as the one you want to project as an illusion. It’s not like making the image in your head and turning it out of your brain to appear in the real world. Make sense?” Dee is looking very intently at the ducks while Julep watches amused from the sidelines.

Virgil frowns. “Is the correct answer yes?” He stares at the sculptures as if they will help him figure it out. “Because no.”

Sighing, Dee points at one of the ruinous creations, “When you look at that, what are you thinking about?” 

“I’m thinking about how weird it is that you own enough dolls to make a large duck out of their legs and how fucking weird you are for doing this. Why, what’s the point?”

He looks like he’s going to facepalm in a very undignified way for a moment. “Can you think of anything else besides the thing you’re looking at?”

Blinking at the creation, he thinks for a moment. How could anyone who had that in front of them not think about it? Then it hits him. That’s why he made these insane things. “You’re trying to improve my concentration on what I want the actual illusion to be.”

“You mustn't hold your concentration, or this won’t work. Try to focus on the statues, not an open field with flowers. Anything not like that.”

From where he sits with his eyes closed, he can feel the grass pulling up between his fingers and in the breeze. Imagining an empty field, he tries to picture what he thought of being in front of him. After a full minute of intense focus, he peeks one eye open, and Dee just waits, not saying anything. Nothing happened.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,” He huffs, frustrated. He picks the dirt and grass out from under his nails, a wrinkle in his brow. “Turn the image, what does that even mean?”

“Don’t picture it in your head first,” Dee sits next to him and puts down the dangling chicken bone mobile he created. His back is straight and he rests his palms facing up on his knees. “Don’t take a deep breath, and forget to concentrate.” He moves his hands to the ground in front of him, “Now, don’t shift the image, like it's on a wheel from your mind, in front of your eyes.” 

Virgil watches as between blinks, the things vanish from sight. He raises a hand to tap the illusion, then hesitates and looks to Dee for permission. 

“Please don’t touch, it’s just so fragile,” Dee smirks and examines his nails. 

The tap sounds exactly like tapping a glass of water or on a window. A bright sound rings out, but the illusion doesn’t break. More confident now, Virgil knocks on the glass, and the prairie scene stays playing in front of him. 

“Honey, you’re gonna have to try softer than that to break it,” Dee picks up the shovel he brought with him to build his structures. “Watch and don’t learn a thing!” The fae laughs as he swings it full force at the illusion, spinning with the momentum of the turn. 

The sound of breaking glass echoes through the field with his laughter, and Virgil can’t help his flinch, looking away so his eyes don't get hit with any of the glass. Nothing that comes his way feels like it hits him. In fact, the bits that do appear to hit him just vanish on impact. Curious, he runs his fingers along the edge of a piece that landed near him and startles as it melts into nothing the second he would have made contact with it. 

Behind the illusion, a single duck falls off its structure from the hit of the shovel, but otherwise, the creations are unharmed by Dee’s magic. 

“Illusions are _weak_ until they are broken. You won’t learn in your own time,” Dee looks disappointed at the duck that fell off and tucks it in his pocket, though what for Virgil doesn’t know. “Not your turn!”

Virgil looks at the spot Dee had put his hand down and takes a deep breath, just like Dee told him. It’s hard not thinking about the statues in the yard, but he manages to make some sort of image in his head of an empty field. The wheel behind his eyes pulls the image over the image of the current field.

The turn feels strange but there’s something there. It leaks into his arms as he tries to put the image in front of him, and it feels like water running over his arms, uncomfortably smooth. He blinks his eyes open, and he’s completely dry, but he’s looking at an empty field. Well, a version of an empty field, anyways.

Dee clicks his tongue happily. The illusion is clearly the wrong time of day, the black of a night sky curling at the edges with sunlight, and as Dee flicks it with two fingers, it shatters. “For a first try, terrible.” It’s silly, but Dee grins just like Thomas would when he scored well on his chemistry assessments. “Now don’t do it again.”

Virgil puts his hands to the ground more confidently. He can do this however many times it takes to get it right.


	6. life’s what happens when you’re making plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are safe haven laws in Imagi, but this isn’t really how they work.

You’ve met the forsaken ward, who thrives under the tutelage of the fae who turned him, and you’ve met the little prince, whose time to shine hasn’t arrived quite yet. Two down, two more to go. 

Fortunately, you’re in luck because while the Evergreen stands calm, the arrival of a little Remus bringing joy to all the land, the kingdom of Imagi stirs. There’s been word going around of disturbances near the southern gate, of townspeople sneaking into the citadel. The queen brushes them all away, of course, but that’s probably because that is where her servants stay. Though they are loyal, for all that she knows, and they try their best to keep the gate safe, for all that she knows, she ignores the rumors for the most part. 

There are no guards at the doors of the servant’s entrance in the southern wing. Let’s go see what adventure awaits us there!

~|~

The basket outside his door is more conspicuous than it has any right to be. It’s woven with dark blue wood, the small thing filled with blankets and soft materials that rise and deflate slow and steady. Thomas has been staring at it for the last hour at least, his door stuck open with a heavy pot and his chair set up to face the doorway. He hasn’t moved since he sat down.

He had performed every spell of investigation he knew to figure out if what the basket contained would bring him harm, if it was some kind of deadly questing beast, he would know by now. There are no illusions in his mind of the number of enemies he’s collected before he actively started working against Adelaide. If someone wants to kill him, they likely have good reason to do so. 

Blue blankets shift as a soft sighing noise can be heard from underneath it all. Thomas abruptly gets up. He doesn’t have the mental facilities to handle a pet of any sort, and if he can’t take care of it, he should find someone who will.

Then, the blankets shriek, and he freezes.

 _That_ , he peels back the blankets with a dazed sort of look of his face, _is decidedly not an animal_.

A baby with the largest gray eyes blink curiously at him, making a noise and reaching out to tug at Thomas’ glasses.

“Oh my gods,” he says out loud to the empty hall. There’s no one around, everyone busy preparing for the prince’s half-year party, leaving him and the infant to stare at each other.

If he previously thought there was no way he could have a pet, he is even less prepared to take care of the actual baby in the basket. He frees the child from their confinement of the restricting blankets and smiles as they wave their arms about. They’re sort of cute for a tiny person he has no idea what to do with. 

He carefully lifts the child out of the basket, now bassinet, he supposes, and cradles them.

The baby’s eyes light up as they try to grab at the tassels on his collar, Thomas just rocking lightly so they shake with his movement, watching as the child’s eyes track the movement.

When the child is sufficiently quiet again, he checks the rest of the basket, emptying it to find a slick envelope and two of the soft blankets, a yarn toy (also soft), and a small charm (an enamel compass star, of sorts?). 

He takes ten minutes to boil water and make himself a cup of tea, keeping the child in his view the whole time. The basket serves as a cradle for the time being, and he has yet to figure out what he will do about that. Pouring the tea is routine and easy, and it helps him take a deep breath before settling down with the contents of the basket that aren’t blankets.

Setting the other items aside, he opens the envelope. 

The letter inside reads:

_To Sir Thomas:_

_I understand you are a busy man, and I understand you may not be able to fulfill my wish. I will not reveal my identity to you, but I will tell you I am a magic user who lives just past the iron thorns. I’m sure you understand my hesitance with raising a magical child in this kingdom, especially now. Her raids are getting worse._

_Please understand that if he was not as powerful as he is, I would have raised him myself. I cannot give him the life I know he should live. He will not be safe with me._

_With you, I believe he stands a chance. So please, I beg of you, take care of him. Let him live._

_His name is Logan._

It takes care of the mystery as to why he has a child, but it doesn’t really help him figure out what to do with him. The child dozes easily, and it occurs to him he has no idea when the child last ate or how long he has been outside. He doesn’t even know Logan’s birthday.

He tries to draw up a pros and cons chart, but there's really only one thing he writes down before he stops. There, on the cons list, is Adelaide finding the child. Logan is a baby, and if Thomas gave him up to the orphanages, there's a chance the drop will be traced back to him. What's worse, if she were to find out Logan had any magical potential higher than his, she would take him. She would either kill him for being a threat, or she would brainwash him into a mindless drone who did her bidding.

That in and of itself is enough of a reason. Adelaide really didn't like when people were stronger than her in any capacity. It's why Linus is gone. It's why Virgil is too.

He’s certain the only reason he isn’t a target himself is because of his connection to Romulus, a loyalty sworn so long ago, he barely thought to protest when Adelaide took it for herself. For Logan, every little thing could make him a target. If he kept him, his relation with Thomas could get him killed just as much as his power. Hell, if Adelaide knew Thomas took him in, they would each be the other’s weakness.

For a moment, he considers a world in which he doesn’t keep the child. She would probably find him. The orphanages would turn him in the second they caught wind of his power. There’s not a scenario they both live if she finds out. He has to stay a secret. 

Logan sleeps soundly, like he has not a care in the world. Thomas doesn’t even have a crib yet. He probably needs to eat too. The first stop would be the kitchens, but he pauses in the doorway. He can’t just leave him alone. 

He sends a message on the wind for Terrence.

~|~

“Thomas, have you gone mad?” Terrence coos gently at the baby in his arms. “What are you going to do about the rebellion? Especially if _she_ finds out?”

“First of all, please don’t baby talk mentions of war at the kid. Second of all,” He hesitates, the bottle of formula heavy as Logan tries to tug it away from him, “I’m not really sure. It’s a death sentence, giving him to the orphanages. And you’ve seen him, he’s kinda cute.”

“All babies look cute when you’re as old as you are and don’t have a kid. The rebellion takes precedence.” Terrence, thankfully having stopped the baby talk, wiggles a finger for Logan to grab, and grins when he does it. “You have a raid coming up in a week. What are you going to do when you have to work?”

“Well, I was sort of hoping you could babysit? And Joan has the outskirts covered pretty well. They shouldn’t need much guidance in taking care of the folks out there.” Logan’s bottle is done and he puts a towel over his shoulder like he’s seen his mother do to tap his back. “Plus, this is already going okay, right, Logan?”

Logan doesn’t respond, nor does he burp or let go of Terrence’s finger.

“Right,” Thomas grips him firmly and sets him back in his basket. “I can do both. I have to do both. I’ll feel terrible if he gets caught up in some raid and Adelaide turns him into some drone follower.”

Terrence watches as Logan blinks slowly at him. “You’ll feel terrible when he hasn’t slept in a week, and you haven’t either,” he mutters, running a hand over his head. “At least he’s not fae.”

“Oh, you of all people don’t need to be saying that,” Thomas scowls pointedly. “I’m not going to teach him any of that stuff, and you aren’t either.”

Terrence raises an eyebrow and presses his lips together like he’s trying not to smile and failing miserably.

“What?” Thomas asks.

“You’re already a dad!” He giggles as Thomas rests his hand over Logan’s small head. “I’ll handle communications with the border from now on. You can organize and get people out. You don’t have to do the field work.”

“I’ll keep you informed on the queen’s raids,” He grins as Terrence turns to leave, “And Terrence?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Man, you gotta know taking a kid like that in now is insane.” They both watch as Logan twitches in his sleep, curling his hands around his yarn toy, “Don’t get yourself killed and we can call it even.”

“No time for dying, now,” He resists the urge to move Logan, lest he wake him, “I’ve got a rebellion to run and a baby to take care of.”


	7. melt your headaches, call it home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learning the learning process.

“Now remember, Val isn’t still settling so she _will_ be there if you go wandering off. If you don’t stick with me, who knows what could happen?”

Dee’s tone is light as he leads him further into the building, but Virgil can’t help the shudder that racks his spine as he follows him. It’s not like Dee has much to worry about, being a winter fae in a winter court. Virgil has done his research and being a spring isn’t likely to do him any favors here. 

Building is a term he would use lightly, room even less so, the three walls towering over their heads, separating the space from the rest of the woods. The floor of the structure is marbled in an ice-like design that casts a light glow. Tall windows end somewhere in the sky, their edges pointing in tips, glinting in the light. The entrance is a gradual shift between the fields and the marble, like one second he could be walking in grass and the next he could skate along the floors.

At the end of the room, there is a singular throne. The cool marble travels upward to create the back, branches of wood curling to the arms and sides. Just looking at it, Virgil can feel the skin of his fingers itch to reach out, to touch.

Behind the throne, a spiral staircase leads into the sky, disappearing as the walls get cloudier. He stares upwards to try and see where it leads, but there’s nothing above it. Dee shoves an elbow in his side before he can get a better look. 

“Unless you want to see Val angry, I wouldn’t suggest you take another step forward,” Dee tugs him back to his side. “I _don’t_ understand that you’ve never been to a fae court before, but you definitely have been in a court before if your past isn't to be believed.”

With only a few feet between where he stands and the throne, Virgil can barely comprehend how he let his curiosity get the best of him. He deliberately takes a few steps back and locks his gaze to the floor. If Adelaide had seen him do something so audacious as to approach her throne while she wasn’t in the room, she would’ve done something worse than take his head off.

The fae queen didn’t seem to be that kind of ruler, but Dee is right. There’s no telling what she would do to him if she were to find out he was within a five feet radius of her throne. Sticking with Dee suddenly feels a lot easier with the context of Adelaide’s court thudding around his skull.

So, taking the gloved hand that tugged him back in his own and clearing his throat, he says, “I would feel better if I could just hang on to you for now, so I don’t,” He gestures around to the throne, “You know.” Awkwardly, he ducks his head down again so he doesn’t have to see Dee judging him.

Instead, Dee softens and offers him his arm, “This won’t be more comfortable. I can’t steer you in the right direction.” Smiling, Dee pulls him through an arch in the wall a little further away, he continues, “We aren’t almost where we need to go anyways.”

Virgil takes a deep breath, fits himself further into Dee’s side, and lets himself be led.

~|~

Dot hasn’t had a coffee all morning. In fact, she hasn’t had a coffee in five days because Larry refuses to get her one from the human town on the outskirts because he hasn’t found the perfect shop yet since their regular one closed. 

To conclude, Dot is very, very tired. 

She is so tired that the boy who is sticking to the side of her very good friend Dee gets her full attention as soon as he walks in the room. The poor thing is shifting his gaze awkwardly back and forth, skittish, clearly here under some sort of duress.

“Oh no, nope, no, I’m not having it, where did you find this kid, Dee? Did you kidnap him?” She nudges herself in between them, using her body to pull him away and set the small fae next to her desk, turning back to shoot a glare at Dee before she turns to him, “Did he kidnap you? Are you okay?”

When the kid just blinks at her, stunned from the fact that she had just moved him like he weighed as much as a feather, she rounds on Dee, who immediately puts both his hands up in surrender, his cane hanging off his thumb. “Can you define kidnap?” He smiles innocently at her enraged noise and moves his hands to block her strikes as she takes off her glove just to whack him with it. 

“I’ve no time for your kidding, _Lapointe!_ ” She snaps as he backs up giggling. 

“Uhh, Lapointe?” The tiny fae speaks for the first time since the pair entered the room. As what seems to be an afterthought, he adds, “And he didn’t kidnap me so much as make sure I couldn’t go back to where I was before.”

“On purpose,” Dee adds, like it would make his story any nicer. He dances out of the way as she reaches for him again. 

“Of course you did,” Dot sighs and rubs at her temples. This would be so much easier to figure out with a single drop of _coffee_ in her system. “So you’re okay with him?” Tiny fae nods. “Then what are you here for, Dee?”

“He _doesn’t_ have plant ancestry and there’s nobody to teach him. I didn’t cover the magic I knew, but I _do_ know the first thing about plant magic, so I wasn’t hoping you would know what to do.”

Dot considers the situation for a moment. The fae standing next to her desk had to be at least a teenager, fifteen years old easily. If Dee had taught him illusion magic and the fae had been able to replicate that magic, there would be no way he had plant magic. 

Fae don’t really mix magic. In children born to two different magical backgrounds, they would receive an affinity for one or the other, not both. Even with that in mind, by Val’s decree, it would be impossible for a fae this old to never have been taught to use their magic until now. The children of this kingdom started early. _Really_ early. Like, five years old, _early_.

“How old are you?” She settles on asking first because this onslaught of magical theory is probably not what he needs at the moment. “And what should I call you?”

“Vee, and I’m seventeen,” Vee fills in, shifting uncomfortably behind the table, eyeing Dee and the exit behind him.

Once more, she rounds on Dee. “Does Val know about him?” There’s no way someone withholding training from a fae for this long wouldn’t be punished. Forgetting how dangerous it was to keep a fae’s magic wild, it was abuse. By the looks of him, his ears hadn’t even pointed yet, so he mustn’t’ve had much time exposed to the Evergreen’s magic. Val would be furious enough to organize a hunt.

“She didn’t know since he came to live with me,” So he probably took care of the party in question, Vee’s answer about the kidnapping theory makes more sense now. She relaxes. Dee hesitates, “I wouldn’t like to train him as an apprentice if you agree to help him.”

“For your potions?” She pointedly looks at him over her glasses. He nods and taps his cane down. “Okay. So. Plant magic.” The lesson plans she has are for the younger fae in the kingdom, but she can teach an older kid. What’s a little more work anyways? 

She’s already making a list of the materials she would need for an older fae. There are fae better suited for teaching older kids, but the kids they teach are usually versed in the magic they specialize in. There are so many people she would love to talk to about this, but with dual magics, it should probably stay private. It makes its way into her muttering and into her hands as she reaches for a notebook and pens.

Vee doesn’t look ready to bolt anymore, a little more relaxed now that she’s absorbed in her work. If he had any training earlier, there would be things to avoid. Especially from someone who purposefully kept him from the education he needed. Dot needs to know so much more about him to get the plans right. 

“I’ll need to see Vee every day for the next week so I can plan properly to curate the lessons to his learning style,” Gathering her focus to talk to the two of them, she lets Vee get out from around her desk to get back to Dee. “Otherwise, you’re free to go. Tomorrow after lunch?”

At Dee’s nod, she gets back to work. Dual magic is wild. There isn’t a single fae in the forest with it. To start training a fae so much older would be difficult, but if she does this right, he will have both magics in full capacity without losing either affinity. Let no one say Dot isn’t ever up for a challenge.

~|~

Dee can hear the sound of a clock ticking time away in the back of his skull the longer Vee stays with Dot. 

He’s been slowly but surely developing more fae traits, the tips of his ears curving up more, his hair turning a more violet color, and his two incisors elongating. It’s startling to see how much exposure to the Evergreen has affected him.

Dot has way too many questions, ones she only asks when Vee is out of earshot. If she didn’t care about Vee’s well-being so much, it would be annoying. She’s managed to figure out how to get him to stop flinching every time they come near him and he takes to her like a baby duck imprints on the first thing it sees. He lets her go with the assumption that Vee had been with some dastardly fae that he had stumbled upon by chance. 

If people were to find out about where Vee really was from, riots would start for a bargaining chip on Adelaide, and if he knew Vee, and he did, the kid would offer in a minute. The last thing Vee needs is any more stress on his head.

As it stands, the magic lessons are also kept under tight wraps. There is no precedence for a fae with two types of magic. In fact, he’s gone through every ancestry book he has, and there hasn’t even been a case where a fae made a deal into two types of affinities. A normal fae couldn’t make deals into it as far as history dictates.

With his magic registers filling up the more he uses his magic, Vee is getting confident. The added benefit of going to court so often, he’s finding it easier to traverse the Evergreen without Dee. The clock gets louder every time he asks to go exploring on his own.

The cord connecting him to Vee gets heavier, too. The deal made Vee immortal, or it was supposed to replicate Dee’s own immortality, and as far as he’d seen, the only thing it had done was make Vee more fae. Guilt sits in him like a stone, heavy and unmoving.

His reasoning when he had found him was to keep him alive, but he hadn’t really known why at the time. He hadn’t been lying when he said Nellie had been a part of it, along with the mercenaries from Adelaide, but there had been something about him, fate or something equally nonsensical, that made Dee hesitate to go back inside. The naiads would have finished healing him, but Dee needed _something_ from him.

He just knows he needed that something, whether it be company or maybe he saw potential or worse _kindness_ , and that’s all. The cord is the brightest one, a beautiful, royal shade of purple, and it's the strongest of them as well. He doesn’t tell Vee about the feeling.

It doesn’t help that he looks so much like Linus.

Or that he talks so much like Thomas.

The work of true love’s kiss had maybe had a little to do with how much he reminded him of how things used to be.

Regardless, certain Vee’s going to leave as soon as Dot gets comfortable enough to trust him to use his own magic safely, Dee uses the time he has with Vee to teach him the basics of potion-making and how to recognize plants for the craft. 

Not surprising with the groundwork that Dot has been laying, he picks it up like a duck to water. Even less surprising, the first thing he manages to summon successfully is catmint, smiling smugly from the floor as the cats surround him as Dee blocks the doorway so more cats don’t figure out what he has (a useless endeavor). The cats stay in the house for days. 

Even the snakes have picked up on Dee’s perpetual insecurity of Vee’s leave. They hiss at his feet whenever he goes outside to drop Vee at Dot’s, or even when he supervises Vee’s interactions with the other animals of the forest. He can feel their judgement coming from where they gather in the library. 

The inevitability comes after six months of daily training. There’s a clearing a half-hour’s ride away from Dee’s place that Vee has taken a fondness too, as well as a chicken who claims to own the place. It stands to reason he will take the cats with him.

Dee waves him off, telling him of course he can’t stay as long as he pleases and to never come visit, and Vee grins back at him saying he’d be over so much he would get sick of him, _dad_.

He putters around like he didn’t hear the title, but internally he registers it with a growing fondness for Vee and all the things that come with him. He considers all the names that belong to him, names that are as much a part of him as his hands, names he can’t have, all the names he gave up and the ones taken away from him, and to the end of that long list, tacks on father. 

If Vee said it in jest or not, it doesn’t matter. Vee has added this name to his life. 

Dee is fairly certain he will miss him dearly when he chooses to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> yall im so hype i've been working on this for a while and yall finally get to see it!!!! please come yell about this with me on tumblr @[fae-redux](https://fae-redux.tumblr.com)


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